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Date |
Event(s) |
| 1 | 1920 | - 7 May 1920: Birth of Thomas Joseph William Hallam
Birth of Thomas Joseph William Hallam at Hamilton Victoria to William Frank & Marguerite Hallam
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| 2 | 1922 | - 25 Jun 1922: Birth of Theresa Mary Hallam
John Joseph & Lucy Troy celebrate with the arrival of a baby girl Theresa Mary Troy (later Hallam). Theresa grew up on our farm until she was 14 years. Life on the farm unrelenting with the milking of 40 to 50 cows and it was an irrigation property. Though Theresa enjoyed the farm and had a pet cow. Mum has noted she remembers when autumn came and it was time to plant crops after a fall of rain. I would carry this with a bottle of cold tea to my father.
There were nights when irrigating a paddock of crops when Dad would have to get up in the night and walk with shovel in hand to cut the water off or divert the flow.
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| 3 | 1927 | - Feb 1927: Thomas Hallam starts Primary school
Thomas was born in Hamilton and lived in Cavendish Victoria some 20 miles out on a sheep and oat farm. Dad started school at 7 years of age at Loretto Convent boarding school for girls but they also took boys also at Junior school up to 12 years of age. Dad (Tom)says he was a good student and as a kid would talk a lot. He went as far as intermediate year 8/9. Thomas's ambition as a child was to be a solicitor.
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| 4 | 1929 | - 1929—1936: Tom’s family moved to Port Fairy where his father still farmed. The Depression hit the family quite hard. His father William consequently started a small butchering business from 1929- 1934. The family stayed on this farm when in 1936 they moved to Portland.
- 4 Oct 1929—7 Sep 1932: Australia's Greta Depression
The Great Depression, generally accepted as beginning when the stock market
crashed in the United States in October 1929, was a time of hardship for many people in Australia. By 1932, about 30% of Australian workers were unemployed. The high unemployment and poverty during this period had a great social impact, with many families affected. Single parents as well as many married couples struggled to support and provide for their children.
Theresa Mary Hallam was 7 years old at the start of the Great Depression and states she does not recall great hardship. For her father John Joseph with his small farm had poultry, cows and grew some of his own produce. John Joseph and Lucy (mother) would barter with neighbours the essential items between them for their survival. Many unemployed men who had left their families in the big cities in search of country jobs.
Theresa remembers her Mum Lucy and Dad John Joseph being very hospitable feeding the men looking for work and at times giving them brief work. Theresa recalls her mother packing a lunch for the men as they moved on from their home in Kerang.
On the Myall farm Mum- Theresa has good memories of farm life-"I remember life on the farm unrelenting milking of 40 to 50 cows and it was an irrigation property.
I remember when autumn came and it was time to plant crops after a fall of rain. My father worked his team of horses through what would have been lunch time. My mother would cut slices of roast lamb onto a plate always with a tomato and cucumber (home grown).
I would carry this with a bottle of cold tea to my father. There were nights when irrigating a paddock of crops when Dad would have to get up in the night and walk with shovel in hand to cut the water off or divert the flow."
Mum had a pet cow and was quite attached to it.
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| 5 | 1935 | - 1935: Thomas started work at 15 years of age.
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| 6 | 1939 | - 1939—1942: Entry to WW2
The Bombing of Darwin, also known as the Battle of Darwin,[4] on 19 February 1942 was the largest single attack ever mounted by a foreign power on Australia. On that day, 242 Japanese aircraft, in two separate raids, attacked the town, ships in Darwin's harbour and the town's two airfields in an attempt to prevent the Allies from using them as bases to contest the invasion of Timor and Java during World War II.
**Thomas was at home when the WW2 started in 1939 and at 19 years of age enrolled in the Army Infantry as a Private.
**In 1942 Thomas Joseph Hallam joined the RAAF and trained as a Leading Aircraftman where for three years in Darwin he repaired damaged Australian planes returned from battle.
The Japanese New Guinea campaign of the Pacific War lasted from January 1942 until the end of the war in August 1945. During the initial phase in early 1942, the Empire of Japan invaded New Guinea (23 January) and the Australian Territory of Papua (21 July) and overran western New Guinea (beginning 29/30 March), which was a part of the Netherlands East Indies. During the second phase, lasting from late 1942 until the Japanese surrender, the Allies—consisting primarily of Australian and US forces. —Fifteen thousand Japanese Troops embarked on the initial Invasion and only three thousand got away.
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| 7 | 1940 | - 1 Jun 1940: WW2
The occupation of the Baltic states ( Latvia where Anita Hallam"s birth parents were born) involved the military occupation of the three Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—by the Soviet Union under the auspices of the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in June 1940
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1869 - 1940 (71 years)